November 13, 2003

Test Spin: Y.A.C.H.T.

Y.A.C.H.T. is Jonathan Bechtolt. That’s it. Just a one man show. Well, it’s Jona (as he is more commonly called) and his laptop. And the first electronic squiggles of melody on Jona’s latest release, Super Warren MMIV, speak to a changing ideal. It’s no longer one man and a guitar to conquer the world, but one man, a software bundle, and a righteous Mac. Granted, this might be a slight exaggeration of the change, but still, the means and medium of music are rapidly being transformed with the populism of the digital age. Nevertheless, new iterations and styles can be easily tied to the old as the end remains the same: tried and true self-expression.

For the forty minutes of this album, I didn’t miss a guitar once. Jona’s mechanically pumping soundscape of rhythmic clicks and glitches contrasting with smooth, warm, gushing, oozing, melodic drones presents a unique world; abstract in nature but palpable in feeling. Beneath this electronic soup lies some semblance of actual instrumentation as Jona compliments his drum machine with the actual artifact, the old-fashioned skins, which he plays on a number of tracks. The effect of out-of-this-world digital sequences combined with a touch of the familiar functions as Jona’s hook. And once he pushes play on his laptop, you can’t help but be mesmerized.

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Beginning at 8 a.m. yesterday, Elizabeth Anne Millhollen ’05 resided in a 50-foot tree behind 660 Stewart Ave. to protest the planned parking lot on West Campus. Cornell students and Ithaca residents rallied in support of Millhollen and to urge the University and the Ithaca Landmarks Preservation Commission to “park it somewhere else.” “I think this is just amazing,” Millhollen shouted from the tree. “If my presence inspires 10 more people to attend this rally, then it’s worth it.” Millhollen is pursuing studies in natural resources in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. The parking lot is part of the $100 million West Campus Residential Initiative. The proposed site is Redbud Woods, which is located between Stewart and University Avenues behind the 660 Cooperative residence. Construction would eliminate the woods and replace them with a 175-car lot in the University Hill neighborhood. During the summer, the Ithaca Common Council declared University Hill a historic district, which requires a Certificate of Appropriateness before construction. As a final step, Cornell must receive this approval from the landmarks commission. Cornell University Police Department officers arrived at 11 a.m. and marked off the area with caution tape. Dropping temperatures and 60-mph winds were causes for concern: “The tree is in danger of falling,” a police officer announced. Millhollen was ordered to leave the tree and given a five-minute warning. She ignored the orders and was charged with five criminal counts: reckless endangerment, resisting arrest, obstructing governmental administration, disorderly contact and criminal nuisance, according to Officer Stanley W. Slovik of the CUPD. But students continued to support Millhollen’s decision to remain in the tree. “I’m just here giving my support to Liz, who is my hero right now,” said Ryan Weggler ’04. Students and residents are in outrage over the Oct. 29 New York Supreme Court ruling which ordered the Ithaca Planning and Development Board to approve the lot. The board had declined the Cornell plans last spring. “I’m angry because of Cornell’s unwillingness to cooperate with the city, and instead of using their six-month term to come up with a better solution, [Cornell] decided to sue the city and have a judge overturn it,” said Calvin Croll ’04, a resident of 660 Stewart Ave. Millhollen remained on her wooden platform in the tree until 4:30 p.m. After eight and a half hours, she finally came down and was arrested. Archived article by Anne Ceccarini

Anybody notice how difficult it was to walk straight yesterday? Or maybe you noticed the bricks flying off buildings around town. Either way, it was obvious that the weather wasn’t exactly pleasant. However, the storm went beyond just agonizing students. A large brick facade on a State Street business was knocked off, while on campus, windows were blown out of their panes in Rockefeller Hall. In addition to these damages, Cornell’s groundskeepers erected barricades around a portion of sidewalk next to Sage Chapel, fearing that a section of roof might slide off. The overall damage was minimal, but things were aggravated by an unforgiving sky. The Damage The only major damage inflicted downtown took place at the Cayuga Mountain Bike Shop, which sits on the corner of Geneva and State Streets. The building began to lose its Geneva St. facade sometime around noon. Luckily, no one was injured when the bricks of the facade began to collapse onto the sidewalk below. The site was quickly barricaded by police, and the section of Geneva between Cayuga and State was closed off until around 7 p.m. Construction crews used heavy machinery to lift the piles of bricks into a dump truck until about that time, and the sidewalk on the corner remained closed into the night. Around Cornell, winds were no less forgiving as students trampled up and down Libe Slope like lost children. Around 11:50 a.m., students in a physics section in Rockefeller Hall witnessed two windows crash to the ground outside their classroom, which faces East Avenue. “I saw the first window fall to the ground, but I only heard the second one crash,” said Dan Carmeli ’06, a student in the physics section. “The windows fell onto the bushes, where nobody was standing, and since it was mid-class time, there was no one really around to get hurt.” When Carmeli left his section at 12:05 p.m., he saw Cornell maintenance crews taking care of the broken glass. Closer to the Arts Quad, preventative measures were taken at Sage Chapel to avert potential injuries. “Barricades were put up on the sidewalk underneath a section of roof that was feared may collapse,” said Pete Salino of Cornell Grounds Care. Tompkins County saw its fair share of problems as well. Although trees were reported knocked down around the outskirts of the county, car accidents were the major problem, according to Tompkins County fire dispatcher Denny Hubbell. A number of auto rollovers were reported out past the airport, on Rt. 13 all the way to Dryden and Cortland. Hubbell mentioned that secondary state roads were especially stricken with accidents such as Rt. 34 by Newfield and 96 near Trumansburg. Most of the affected drivers walked away from their accidents unscathed. Windy Words The responses of students to the storm were pretty consistent across campus; basically, no one was pleased. “At first the wind didn’t seem that bad,” said Shannon Michaels ’05, “but then I almost got blown over!” Natalie Neuman ’04 remembers thinking that “the wind I felt was like God telling me I should have gone to UCLA.” On his way to Collegetown, Josh Resnick ’04 described the temperature as “witch-teat cold.” In response to the freezing conditions, Cory Emil ’05 went home “and sat in front of the wall, pretending it was a fireplace.” A disgruntled Justin Berkowitz ’05 could tell it was chilly without a thermometer. “I knew it was cold when I saw that the line of North Face-clad customers waiting for coffee at Olin Cafe strutted into the lobby,” he said. Why the Weather Yesterday was not the first time Ithaca has been subjected to high winds. In fact, just last week, a similarly developed storm system brought lots of rain and gusty winds. However, seldom do storms erupt like this one. As we move into the winter season, our temperatures are going through major changes. Instead of receiving our air from the warm, moist south, we are beginning to see a shift (like every autumn) to winds coming from the cold, dry northwest (Canada). This temperature gradient explains why we’ve lately seen a huge fluctuation in temperatures every few days. Fellow meteorologist Anthony Santorelli ’05 noted that besides the temperature gradient, a huge pressure gradient existed around the low-pressure system that moved through our area. A pressure gradient is an area of the atmosphere that has differences in pressure. The bigger the differences, the windier the conditions on the surface below. It was the destructive combination of the two gradients which led to perhaps the worst storm system to strike Ithaca yet this year. Archived article by Adam Daum